I was diagnosed with diabetes on April 11th…I got the call at work while I was surfing recipe sites in preparation for Easter dinner. I started this Blog because my friends and family have grown bored of my endless diabetic rambling…. I know this because I can see their eyes roll back in their heads when I start talking. They love me…. they are supportive…. but they don’t truly understand what the big deal is.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

In the big scheme of things…

diabetes is no big deal. It could be so much worse. I could have lymphoma like Anthea who lost her very short battle with it on Friday.

Anthea had a shop in Austin for years…. she made the best incense and candles and oils. She made jewelry and baths salts and was a very gifted reader. And she was my friend. And we were in the middle of opening a shop together… and then she got sick. A month ago I bullied her into seeing a doctor. We were certain it was her gallbladder, just like what I had gone through a few years earlier. Piece of cake, get it taken care of and be done with it. Only that’s not what it was at all….

So she went into the hospital and it was decided that chemo and radiation was the way to go and she cut off all her hair in anticipation and resolved herself that at best this was going to be a long hard road and we all prepared ourselves. But it wasn’t a long road, even though it was a hard one and two weeks into the treatment the doctors told her they wish she would have come in 5 years earlier and how very sorry they were but there wasn’t any more they could do….

And we moved her to hospice…. and we took turns being with her…. and she made her wishes known…. and we talked and talked about all our wayward plans….and we cried and we laughed and we hugged…..and she died.

We’re cleaning up the pieces of the life she left behind….all her unfinished business ….and we’re packing up her belonging with the lists we made with her at the hospice, gifting the people she loved with the things she wanted them to have and we’re trying to move one foot in front of the other.